The Feminist Taboo of Unveiling Maternal Abuse

Mothers can be more likely than fathers to abuse children, according to data from one United Kingdom study and Child Protective Services in the United States.

For many, maternal abuse—a mother’s abuse or neglect of her minor or adult children—feels like a deeply misunderstood, underestimated, and unspeakable trauma.

The prevalence of maternal abuse may seem unbelievable to many, since it flies in the face of gender stereotypes entrenched by Hollywood, religious patriarchy, and revisionist history that portray mothers as divinely-guided martyrs who are always and only caring, pure-hearted, and selfless.

Granted, it’s a fact that mothers generally take parenting more seriously. The Jimmy Kimmel Live Show, for example, stopped random dads on the street, and filmed their bewilderment as they struggled to recall the birthdays of their kids. On Twitter, educators and pediatricians chimed in with stories of fathers routinely struggling with paperwork pertaining to their kids.

Across world cultures, single mothers outnumber single fathers and mothers typically exercise most control over caretaking. And globally, most societies socialize girls to aspire toward marriage and motherhood––at the expense of their own dreams and hopes—while orienting boys toward becoming professionals, armed or civil servants, inventors, or manual laborers—but hardly ever spouses or parents.

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Yet, even if many find solace in romanticizing mothers as symbols of safety, a prevalence of paternal abuse and neglect does not negate the reality of maternal abuse. Gender essentialism is one reason why many feel the impulse to “but what about” and deflect.

Simply put, gender essentialism biologizes gender scripts, homogenizes genetic diversity, and assumes that gender norms are innate, rather than learned through modeling, observation, and reinforcement.

Three basic facts capture that mouthful of a definition.

First, the human species shares 99.9% of the same DNA. Second, the superficial differences across our species account for just .01% of our genetic makeup. And third, biological gender is easily debunked by the genetic diversity of both intersex folks and cisgender folks (there exists a wide range of sex hormones among folks who identify as “just female” or “just male.”

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This rich nuance becomes problematic in society wherein the majority seems hellbent on upholding oppressive ideologies by conflating absolutism with clarity, confusing ambiguity and contradiction with incoherence instead of a complete picture, and politicizing a ‘both/and’ moral framework as sinful, while clinging to a reductionist ‘either-or’ one that isn’t even realistic.

Consequently, few question the naturalistic view of motherhood that frames “maternal instinct” as innate and universal. Not only that, but naturalistic fallacies downplay the role of structural violence in forcing women to mythologize reproduction—like the 15th-century witch-hunting of midwives whose abortion services were viewed as undermining Europe’s transition from feudalism to capitalism.

For well-intentioned reasons—which have, nevertheless, cast maternal abuse as improbable—modern feminists have sometimes fallen to the same exact naturalistic fallacy of gender essentialism.

The Feminist Taboo of Maternal Accountability

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“Patriarchy has no gender,” wrote Black feminist bell hooks, reminding us that patriarchy is an ideology, not a gene, hormone, or organ, and thus, patriarchal emotional socialization can condition girls and boys alike.

Even if the internalized patriarchy of girls and women does not make them responsible for eradicating a system established and maintained by men, internalized patriarchy can still be harmful.

A mother’s belief in essentialist myths of gender can still oppress transgender people, her commitment to dominator culture can still disempower and traumatize other women, and her investment in hegemonic ideologies like authoritarianism, carcerality, and racial supremacy can justify dehumanizing, disappearing, or exploiting the underclass to suit her biases or self-interest.

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A full embodiment of feminism recognizes that people of any sex can uphold patriarchy via cultural and historical myths, epistemologies, ideologies and theologies, and political institutions and economies that are misogynistic.

A full embodiment of feminism interrogates identity-based power differentials between people of “opposite” sexes, but also the ideological, intra-community power struggles between people of the same sex, culture, and class. It is just as much a mirror as it is a microscope.

This principle extends to accountability for girls’ and women’s physical, psychological, and sexual abuse of others, including individuals assigned male at birth.

The most common characteristic of maternal abuse is emotional manipulation after being called in for harm, especially in the form of crocodile tears, gossip, guilt-trips, stonewalling, tone-policing, and victim-playing.

Source: Karolin Gabrowska

These tactics of emotional abuse may be instilled early on, when some girls learn that they can pretend to be a “good girl,” while simultaneously hurting other girls’ psyches through covert tactics of passive aggression that—on the surface—do not appear to disturb others or violate any social norms.

Such callous, ruthless, and unethical emotional manipulation is, in and of itself, a clear indication of internalized patriarchy and patriarchal emotional socialization.

But equally alarming is the strategic use of these tactics to avoid acknowledging and/or apologizing for harm. That is sheer patriarchy, and addressing patriarchy in mothers is crucial work for feminists and feminist movements.

To be clear, holding mothers accountable and victim-blaming mothers for patriarchy are different. I marvel at the nuanced feminism and Ijeoma Awuaku Umebinyulo:

“We forget that many men love to raise feminist daughters, while never letting their wives be as free as their daughters. Now, you have daughters who forget that the patriarchy made it almost impossible for mothers to be free. Many mothers then put their frustrations on their daughters. Forgive your mother for all the miracles she couldn’t perform.”

There’s always room for extending grace to harm-doers, including mothers, who are genuinely reflective and remorseful. We all make mistakes, we all have things to unlearn, we all have growth areas.

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Narratives of forgiveness and reconciliation are easy on our hearts and spirits, because they align with tropes of motherhood that are essentialist, romanticized, sanitized, and ultimately comforting.

Realistically, though, many survivors of maternal abuse deal with mothers interested more in power struggles and patriarchal domination—either for themselves, or for the male partners they learned to put on a pedestal—than peace rooted in mutual honesty, humility, and reciprocity.

Feminism shouldn’t leave behind these many survivors who un-mother and re-mother themselves.